Stay Away from Negative Thoughts to Improve Problem Solving Ability

New research suggests that keeping away from tendency to brood even for a small amount of time will help you to increase problem-solving ability.

To understand how rumination affects problem solving, researchers asked 51 study participants to watch a short movie clip. The movie clip was designed to make viewers sad. Afterwards they were given tests to check their problem solving abilities. Researchers found that people who were able to distract themselves did better at the tests.

A study published in Cambridge Journals reports that depressed people who were prone to rumination reported poorer mood and were bad at problem-solving. The researchers say that rumination must be addressed in people who are depressed to make the intervention program more successful.

Another study, that tested how rumination and distraction affected people and their mood, reported that people with depression tend to be in poorer mood after ruminating while non-depressed people have no mood changes post-rumination. Also, distraction (like reading description of an object or place) makes people less depressed.